It was not the cost but the deceit that bothers him, Charles Wayne Gentry said gently from the witness stand Thursday in federal court in Roanoke.

He'd gathered his savings, sold his house and store and counseled his wife and brother-in-law to put in their inheritance -- $724,000 in all -- only to see the money disappear in the collapse of Mountain Investments and Dogwood Farms, two businesses run by a pair of Giles County financial advisers indicted last year on 42 charges tied to securities fraud.

Testifying at the end of the first week of what is expected to be a three-week jury trial for Ted James Johnson Jr., a former Giles County commissioner of the revenue and clerk of circuit court turned would-be investment broker, Gentry was composed.

No, Johnson had not discussed the risk of investing, Gentry said as Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennie Waering walked him through his story. No, he'd been given almost no details of how his money would be invested.

And no, Gentry said, he had no idea his money was being used to pay the personal expenses of Johnson and his partner, Frank Graham Farrier Jr., who pleaded guilty to fraud charges earlier this month and who earlier this week testified about how he and Johnson had put little of their clients' money in the market.

Instead, according to Farrier's testimony and an array of financial records collected by investigators, Johnson and Farrier ran a Ponzi scheme, in which obligations to earlier investors were paid with money collected from new investors. It was a spiraling scam that eventually collapsed and cost investors millions of dollars, prosecutors said.

Gentry, who for decades ran That Seven Day Market, a gas station and convenience store in Pearisburg, lost the money that he thought would cover his early retirement. He and his wife began cleaning offices and taking other jobs. Eventually they moved to Chesapeake to live with one of their children, and Gentry now drives a school bus, a job that gives him insurance, he said.

Gentry said he had never pressed Johnson for details because he thought he knew him. He worshipped with Johnson at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was their work together as Mormons, along with anecdotes he heard from others in the community about lucrative investments made with Johnson, that convinced Gentry he was safe trusting his retirement money to Johnson.

Johnson told him he was issuing promissory notes guaranteeing 25 percent interest or better. Gentry said he visited Johnson's stately home, where he saw a "trading room" and banks of computer screens that purported to show market activity. Johnson told him he was investing in the "options market," making 30 percent or better returns and living off the proceeds above what he paid investors, Gentry testified.

"I felt if ever there was a righteous man, it was Teddy Johnson," Gentry said in court. "It's hard to understand the trust I had, my wife and I both had, in Teddy Johnson. ... I'm very, very disappointed in what I've heard and learned.

"That hurts me."

Johnson's investors included fellow Mormons from Giles County and beyond, teachers and university professors, and businessmen.

Jerry Smith of Radford testified Thursday that he was a vice president at the National Bank of Blacksburg when he invested more than $170,000 of his and his mother's money with Johnson. He'd known the families of Johnson and Farrier for years and heard how others around the county were seeing high returns.

Earlier in the week, Giles County businessman Michael Bostic recalled how the markets of the 1990s were booming and he figured Johnson just had the knowledge to do a bit better.

Tony Anderson, one of Johnson's attorneys, pointed out that his client tried to keep up on interest payments, and that he and Farrier used their own money, or their families' money, in an attempt to stay afloat. Figures presented by prosecutors indicated that Gentry received more than $479,000 in monthly payments during the five years after he began investing with Johnson. Of about $5.4 million Johnson and Farrier went through between late 1999 and 2004, when they declared bankruptcy, about 10 percent was money from Johnson and his relatives, and 4 percent from Farrier and his family.

Anderson has argued that Johnson meant to pay everyone back with the sale of more than 200 acres that Dogwood Farms owned near the Pearisburg Wal-Mart.

Gentry testified that Johnson had told him that in 2002. But by then, Gentry said, he was realizing it was too late.

He said he holds no grudge against Johnson.

The trial will not resume until Monday, but Gentry said he would not be around to see what happened.

He had to get back to his bus-driving job.